Truck Wreck, Chemical Spill Briefly Close I-5

A chain-reaction accident involving six trucks--four of them colliding--on the rain-slicked Golden State Freeway in Sylmar this morning caused a chemical spill that briefly closed the entire freeway, authorities said. There were no injuries.

Though most lanes of Interstate 5 were reopened 15 minutes after the 5 a.m. accident, the southbound truck route was closed at Balboa Boulevard more than five hours, backing up traffic over two miles to the Antelope Valley Freeway.

The accident initially caused concern because authorities said that ammonium-nitrate fertilizer that had fallen from one of the trucks could have become explosive if it mixed with diesel fuel. But Officer Steve Cortes of the California Highway Patrol reported that the chemical fertilizer was cautiously cleaned off the roadway before any problems arose.

The CHP said the accident occurred as two tractor-trailer rigs came out of a 300-foot tunnel that runs beneath the freeway’s car lanes and collided as they hit the wet pavement.

The CHP said a flatbed truck hauling 45,000 pounds of chemical fertilizer jackknifed as its driver attempted to avoid the accident. A fourth truck also jackknifed and hit the flatbed, knocking about five 50-pound bags of fertilizer onto the roadway.

A fifth truck sideswiped the tunnel wall while stopping, and a tanker truck carrying propane skidded to a stop in the tunnel but did not crash into any of the other trucks, witnesses said.

The identities of the drivers of the vehicles were unavailable this morning and the CHP said the cause of the accident was still under investigation.

Victor Louie, 42, of Bakersfield, was driving the truck that struck the tunnel wall. He said that as he was skidding to a stop he saw the propane tanker skid by him toward the four trucks tangled up ahead. Fearing an explosion, he jumped out of his stopped truck and ran.

There was no explosion, but county fire officials, who arrived on the scene first, ordered the entire freeway shut down in both directions until they could determine what danger the spilled chemical posed.